


{The Illogicality of these Human Hands (and the space in which these cracks are boundless)}.

by PassionsPromise



Series: {This Little Frame That Holds Me Is Worth So Much More In Your Hands}. [4]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, BAMF!Jim (kinda), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Rescue Missions, Violence, Worried McCoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 23:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7594660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PassionsPromise/pseuds/PassionsPromise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crew are captured. Their Captain must find them.</p>
<p>Days pass, and Spock is not sure that they will, after all, survive.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And then, he hears his Captain's voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	{The Illogicality of these Human Hands (and the space in which these cracks are boundless)}.

**Author's Note:**

> Songs Used:
> 
> Don’t Panic; Aerial.  
> Battle Cry: Imagine Dragons.  
> Colour Spectrum: Coldplay.

_Spock had never understood emotion; it was both illogical and unnatural. Human._

_Yet, sometimes, those little sparks of humanity flickered inside of him, sparks that only reacted when he was caught by how far humanity would go to save its own._

 

**

 

_“I’ll find you- I promise-!!”_

 

Their odds were dwindling down to mere fractional digits.

 

_“I’ll find you- I promise-!!”_

 

Their water had ceased three days previous; the food was sparse, infested with disease; simply put, if they did not escape the confines of this dark, damp prison…

 

_“I’ll find you-“_

 

… they would all die.

Uhura had already succumbed to the fever that accompanied the barbaric, primeval bullet-wound she had received a day ago; Sulu and Chekov had stopped talking twenty-one-point-five hours previous, their hands shaking from the lacerations they’d received when they tried to escape after they had been imprisoned.

“Dammnit,” McCoy mumbled. Spock knew that the doctor would not give in, not when there were plenty more patients in dire need of his help. The Enterprise had suffered for this; they had been pulled into a black hole, and they were unable to escape from the new world that they had entered. Spock watched the stress on the doctor’s face, the intense tiredness of constant care-giving, the unknown situation of the planet they were currently sitting on; his body slumped a little further into the damp, cold cement under him, and Spock held Uhura tighter, to be sure that she was still breathing.

_Their Captain was…_

“He’s coming. I know he is,” McCoy breathed in answer to Spock’s thoughts. “Just a little longer-“

“Ve know,” Chekov breathed, his voice hoarse. “The Keptin will be here. Soon.”

“I do not think that the statistical-“

“Bullshit, hobgoblin. I _know_ Jim better than the lot of you. He’s coming. He’d _never_ leave us behind.”

 

 

They were attempting to flee from enemy territory when they were caught. They had not expected the explosions, the fire, nor their separation from the Captain.

Uhura had been hit with bullet-fire in the chaos, and McCoy had grabbed her before she hit the ground and, there, their Captain was screaming at them- _“I’ll find you, I promise-!“_ before being torn from them by the raging fire.

The forest had been in complete ruins, and their enemy- it was safe to say, however crude the phrase- had won. They had nowhere to go, nowhere to flee to; they were trapped, and they had been captured.

But the Captain had screamed, _“I’ll find you, I promise-!“_

 

 

The fifth day had passed; Spock counted down the minute moments to their untimely deaths.

He predicted that the woman in his arms would pass first.

Uhura’s hands shook in his; he could feel every inch of emotion that coursed through her frail body, and, with every inch of his energy, Spock channeled all the comfort he could give through the touch of their skin. Her body seeped down into the depths of a deep sleep, but it could not contain the slight hitches in her breaths.

“He’ll be here soon,” McCoy’s voice cracked a little as he tore another ribbon off his sleeve to tighten the pressure over the bleeding wound over her abdomen. “Soon.”

 

 

A doubt crawled into Spock’s veins, and he was unsure as to whether it was his own, or a remnant of the prison in which they were held captive. Regardless, the doubt was unravelling into a raging beast that refused to quell under his reason.

Time was not on their side; they needed him, now-

_They were dying; their dying was coming slow._

 

 

Ten days in, and Sulu and Chekov had passed the night without waking, their heads connected on each other’s shoulders.

Spock surmised that it would take a week, and the furious cold would eventually crack the vulnerable skins of his friends; McCoy had grappled with Uhura’s bandages, knowing she was passing, passing-

A murmur of emotion cracked under the surface of Spock’s demeanor.

He did not want to die, but death was coming anyway, and the Captain was nowhere to be found.

“Coming,” McCoy had said, barely a contained whisper, and Spock’s hand reached for the Doctor’s neck, before the man batted his hand out of the way.

“Give it to the kids,” he said, motioning toward Sulu and Chekov. “I’m not dying when I know that Jim is coming. I’m not _fucking_ giving in.”

 

 

 

The hope was going…

 

 

 

_“I’ll find you, I promise-!”_

 

 

 

The hope was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was on the eleventh day that Spock heard something, a tremble of unease, coming from the ceiling above.

Spock looked up, the movement making him dizzy, but in the darkness, he heard it, clear as day-

_“-he fuck are my crew-?!”_

Spock shook McCoy’s shoulder, and the doctor pulled himself up on weaker-than-weak arms.

Uhura’s breaths were barely there anymore, and the pallor of her skin had sunk into a pale-grey.

Sulu and Chekov were unresponsive.

“The Captain,” Spock murmured. “I hear him. He’s coming.”

“Told you. He’d never leave us behind,” McCoy whispered, swallowing against his dry, paper-thin throat, and the tremor of loyalty in the doctor’s voice still startled Spock; the doctor _still_ believed in the Captain, and even he was on the verge of complete exhaustion.

Humanity was an unusual trait; it still remained incomprehensible to the Vulcan.

Suddenly, a spark- _no, a bullet, was it a bullet?_ \- fired downward- Spock could hear the reverberations through the prison cell.

Then, he heard their enemy’s screams.

“No, Doctor McCoy- he is _actually_ coming-“ Spock started, attempting to move himself, to move Uhura, but-

“I know. I heard him,” McCoy answered, grumbling as he sat up a little higher against the wall. “I heard him coming long before you did, Spock.”

Another round of bullets, and that voice- nearer, _nearer_ -

_“Where are they? Where did you put them?! Answer me, now!”_

The vengeance, the violence in Captain Kirk’s voice was something dark and deadly; Spock could not understand it- he looked up to the ceiling, questioning the Captain’s rash method of attack-

Was the Captain actually taking on a superior _colony_ by himself?

The raging storm of bullets and the screeches of the monsters- for yes, they were truly monsters- caused Uhura to jump out of her deep sleep; she moaned, and the grating sound of vicious phaser blasts meeting vulnerable, brittle bones stirred Sulu and Chekov.

“Vhat iz-“ Chekov breathed-

_“Tell me now- where are they?! **Where is my crew**?!!” _ Captain Kirk’s voice pivoted on anger, and the explosion that rocked the hall in front of the bars startled Chekov. McCoy had gotten to his feet first, and tumbled over before crawling to the bars.

“Jim- _in here_!” he suddenly bellowed, and there-

Coming around the corner-

_“Guys, where are you?!”_

Jim’s silhouette was framed with the bag on his back, and the two massive weapons- two phasers- in his hands, and his eyes-

Spock would never, _ever_ , forget those eyes-

There was murder in those wide, cool-blue eyes, a murder that was quenched when their Captain saw them, when their Captain faltered. He took in the sight of Uhura in Spock’s arms, McCoy’s body on the ground and Sulu and Chekov lying against the wall, and the well of pain suddenly became unbearable for Spock to look at. “Get back,” the Captain said, dropping one of the guns in his hands and aiming at the bars. “Close your eyes.”

He fired, and the resulting explosion shot sparks across their prison-cell. Spock shielded Uhura, while McCoy’s face went down onto the damp cement.

Suddenly, there were hands grasping arms and a strength that Spock never knew the Captain possessed had lifted them all up and out of the prison. “You have to stay behind me at all times, you hear? I’ve got a Medkit, Bones, but we need to move before _they_ start multiplying again.” Spock knew who _they_ were, but he was more transfixed by the Captain, who was lifting a staggering Chekov into his arms. “Scotty can’t beam us from inside the camp; once we reach outside, he’ll lock on.”

“I’ll carry Lieutenant Uhura, if Doctor McCoy will-“ Spock started before McCoy waved the First Commander off.

“I’ve got Sulu and Chekov; just get us the _hell_ out of here, Jim.”

From out of the corner of the Commander’s inquisitive eyes, the Captain’s face tightened, but he reigned in the emotion, and pulled himself into the present moment. Rage overtook his eyes; a protective band that Spock had seen only seconds prior.

Already, Spock could hear the sounds of footfall. “Captain, they are-“

“Already ten steps ahead of you, Spock,” the Captain replied, “And for the last fucking time, it’s _Jim_.”

Spock blinked, and suddenly, Jim swerved and pulled his guns on the two guards that had already gained entrance to the block. “Follow me,” Jim said, and they did, out again into the fury and chaos that their Captain had left behind in order to find them. Spock could smell fire, blood, burnt metal; everything had been razed in the war Jim had blazed for them; Spock could not recognise one corridor from another, and he reasoned that, if he were to ever cross Jim, to cross Jim and his crew, that _this_ would be the result.

He looked to his friend’s back, to the strength that fell on those shoulders.

_“I’ll find you, I promise-!”_

His Captain had raced through an entire colony- had raised war- just for them. _His_ crew.

How… illogical. Yet… logical, also.

His grip on Uhura’s frail, light form tightened. He couldn’t feel her breaths; he knew she was still grappling with consciousness. He tightened his grip again, reassurance soothing from his connection into her body. She relaxed slightly into his hold, and the tip of her forehead shuddered against his neck.

“Get the prisoners!” someone had shouted in English dialogue. Jim had swerved on his feet, fire boiling in his cool-blue eyes, and he’d aimed over their heads, shooting with ease, without fear, and something big had slumped down to the ground under them. The protectiveness in those eyes was enough to stall even Spock.

“Keep moving, guys. Were twenty feet from the exit,” Jim suddenly shouted. “You can _do_ this, everyone-“

Jim turned, and shot at anything that moved. The screams and threats of murder suddenly fell on deaf ears, as one would phrase it- and Spock had never been so much in… awe… of his Captain.

Once their feet hit the earth, and the sun blared unforgivingly down on them, Jim suddenly called, “Now Scotty- _beam us the fuck out of here now!”_

The white aura had lanced around each of them, and Spock had heard it, the unmistakable, primeval sound of rippling gun-shots, but then there was nothing, nothing except the clean smell of the Enterprise, of M’Benga calling out for antibiotics and biobeds, and Spock became dull, numb, to whatever came next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Spock became aware of consciousness, he had looked up and found the crew asleep on their biobeds. The steady beat of their vitals coupled with the dimmed lights had soothed him; the lines on Uhura’s face were relaxed, and Chekov and Sulu rested while facing each other from across their biobeds. Spock watched them all, carefully, and then wondered where in the room Doctor McCoy was-

“Jim, you need to get that taken care of-“

“Get back into the bed and sleep, Bones-“

“Oh for Chrissakes, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a-“

“Get back into the bed, _now,_ Bones.”

The Captain’s voice drew Spock to the centre of the room, where a chair sat with a pale-faced Captain on its seat. Doctor McCoy was standing there, his hands hovering over the space between them, the pale-white hospital scrubs hanging low over his body, and, suddenly-

“Jim, I as sure as hell _am not_ moving until we do work on that-“

“-graze that M’Benga cleared up. It’s okay, Bones, so just- _please_ , get back into the bed and rest like I asked you to. Please.” The finality (the plea) in the Captain’s voice thrummed under Spock’s skin.

“Jim,” Doctor McCoy whispered, after a brief moment, “We’re _alive_ , thanks to you. For God’s sakes, can’t you take a few minutes just to rest yourself? You’ve been-“

“This has nothing to do with me, _goddamnit_ ,” the Captain’s voice turned harsh, and finally, _finally_ , Jim turned to look up to Bones’s eyes. He stood, and even Spock could see the exhaustion, the slight sway, that poured from his body and into the space around them. “You and my crew were put in _jeopardy_ for _eleven days_ \- Uhura bled out; she contracted a fever, and likely won’t wake up for a few days until the _seven-eight, no- **ten** transfusions_ have finally settled in her body. Chekov and Sulu both tried to escape that prison; both suffered multiple lacerations to their arms, and Chekov may now be suffering from pneumonia- we won’t know until the results come back, which won’t be for another _two hours_ because I told-“

“M’Benga to go take a break after working for eleven days straight to help find us,” the doctor finished.

Spock froze, then blinked. “What do you mean, Doctor McCoy?” he asked, and the Captain jumped when he heard his voice, and relief flooded his face when he took in Spock’s sitting body. Spock noticed the same clothes, the deep-blue hues of the thick jacket and trousers used in combat upon Starfleet during missions; they were shrouded in dust and blood splatters, and the hands under the cuffs were covered in cuts and bruises that hadn’t undergone any form of dermal regeneration.

Spock took in the Captain’s hollowed eyes, the bone-deep tiredness and dark, long rings that kneaded themselves into the Captain’s skin. His bare neck revealed more cuts, more bruises, and Spock was sure there were plenty more hidden underneath the folds of that jacket.

Of course, then he linked everything together when he remembered the sound of the gun-shots; no mention of it had occurred from Doctor McCoy- except for the slight use of the word ‘graze.’ Jim had been hit in a place that the Vulcan couldn’t see, and he focused on the space where he found the most blood; the side of his waist.

McCoy turned to face the Vulcan, and his eyes, shadowed by a sickening tiredness and lack of hydration, narrowed slightly as he said, “Jim, as well as everyone else here on Enterprise, all worked to find us, track us down, over the past eleven days and ten nights- and don’t try to deny it, you bloody, stupid moron!” he added, turning back to catch the haggard look that the Captain was giving him. “Chapel told me everything, and even she was pissed when you refused the sleep drug.”

“I’m not sleeping until I know that everyone is okay, Bones,” Jim drew out, before reaching out and tugging Doctor McCoy along to his bed on Spock’s left. “That includes you.” The doctor’s eyes widened in anger, before he wrenched his arm out of the Captain’s grip, and in that instant, Jim’s body swayed again, and he looked up to the doctor, something close to hurt flashing across his eyes. He opened his mouth, then stopped.

_There it was._ Spock recognized it, the slight give-in, the utterly lost look of a man who had pushed too far. The Captain’s mouth opened again, but the lost, confused look in his eyes hadn’t caught with his brain, and Spock knew what was happening, before he ever, fully, became aware of it.

_“I’ll find you, I promise-_!”

“Sorry- I’ll just-“ Jim swayed again, his hands grappling for something to say, when Spock felt himself move.

Jim’s body dropped, and the energy he’d used, all the energy he’d expended from the last eleven days, collapsed and crumpled with it. He dropped, and Spock’s hands grabbed his elbows, pulling him up as his head drooped down. McCoy lurched into motion, pushing the emergency button next to Spock’s bed and causing Chapel to come running-

“Nurse, grab me some bandages and that tricorder- fast,” McCoy said as Spock pulled Jim’s body over and onto the doctor’s bed. The tremors that ran through the Captain’s body suddenly caught against Spock’s skin, and h-

The pain was what lanced through his body first, and then Spock caught images, stark realities, of loss and fire and screams and of the world through his Captain’s eyes- a world where M’Benga was saying that he, the Captain of the Enterprise, needed to sleep, a world where Scotty was shaking his head as he stared hard at the digits at the screen in front of him- _“Sir, I cannae’ do anythin’ abou’ the beaming- yer gonnae hav’ to get throu’ the camp an’ then find someway of gettin’ all o’ the crew onto safe ground-“_ and a place where Jim was screaming names while seeing each of his crew- his friends, _goddamnit_ , his goddamn _family_ \- lay forgotten in a prison cell somewhere, dying, somewhere, somewhere he couldn’t reach, and a _“I will not let them down, no matter what- I will not leave them there-“_

And a little voice, a tiny, childlike voice, whispering, _“I don’t want to be alone-“_

Eleven days, compounded into a plethora of fear and panic and stress and exhaustion and adrenaline, and Spock let his grasp on Jim slip as McCoy enveloped the Captain in his waiting arms-

“- need an IV about… fucking five hours ago, Chapel-“

“It’s not my fault our Captain has a head made of thick plastic,” Nurse Chapel was saying, “He said he wasn’t going to bloody sleep until _you all came home_ -“ and Spock’s hands were trembling with a new-found emotion that seemed to knead deep into the genetic fibre of his Captain’s whole being-

Jim’s voice was whispering through the faint contact of his skin on the Captain’s clothing- _“I’m not coming home without **my family** -“_

Could loyalty become an emotion?

Jim’s loyalty knew _no bounds_ ; Spock could feel it, inching and deadly, through the contact. Jim’s loyalty _preyed_ on everything within him; it consumed to the point of madness- _“I’m not sleeping until I know that everyone is okay, Bones-“_

He looked to Jim’s convulsing form, and heard Sulu grumble out a question from behind, but he watched his Captain, and found that the hope that had died in the prison had suddenly come to life again. Jim- _their Jim_ , no-one else’s Jim- had brought them all home, as Chapel had said; he had done so, single-handedly, without any fear for what might have happened to him in the process.

His loyalty went far beyond any Captain’s- any human’s.

But McCoy _had known_ ; he knew his Captain better than even Spock did; _“-I heard him. I heard him coming long before you did, Spock.”_

“Is ze Keptin alright?” Chekov asked over Spock’s shoulder. The clearness of his voice confirmed that he did not have pneumonia, as Jim had feared. In fact…

Spock looked over his shoulder and found both Sulu and Chekov looking over his shoulder to the Captain, their faces pale but alert-

“What happened?” Sulu asked. “Is the Captain-“

“The Captain must allow his body to rest,” Spock said. “And you both need rest too, the both of you-“

“Not until we know he’s grounded,” Sulu replied. “Our Captain risked his life-“

“Your Captain is a maniac who clearly cannot take goddamn care of himself,” McCoy growled. Spock turned to look at the haggard doctor, whose hands clung to the edge of the biobed, staring down at the pliant body underneath him. “Chapel, if Jim ever, _ever_ disregards your words in future, you have my permission to sedate him. Even if he says no.”

Spock caught a glimpse of skin marred with welts and bruises and blood that ran under the surface of the skin. It was enough to make Spock feel a sliver of anger- not enough to emotionally compromise him, but enough to understand that Jim, their Captain, would go to any lengths for his family.

Eleven days, ten nights of suffering, of searching for them.

_(And Spock had thought that he would not come for them)._

A hole- he could not describe it in any other way- had opened up inside of him.

“It’s the exhaustion that took him under,” Chapel was saying. “Finally. He never left Engineering- even Mr. Scott is sound asleep down the hall thanks to the Captain’s constant worrying; truly, I’ve never seen the Captain become so desperate- he pulled in every last crew member on Enterprise just to find you all, and when Mr. Scott volunteered to go down, the Captain refused. You wouldn’t believe what our Jim had said when Mr. Scott questioned him about it.”

Doctor McCoy ground his teeth in irritation. “The stupid idiot.”

“He said that Mr Scott was the only one who could beam them back; he also said that he was the only one who would go, because he-“

“- didn’t want anyone else to be harmed while he searched for us,” Spock finished. Nurse Chapel glanced in his direction, her eyes wide.

“I heard him,” Spock answered.

McCoy sighed in silence. Then, he said, “We need to get him into surgery- I don’t like the look of all that internal bleeding- the fact it’s so close to the skin-” as the Doctor said it, he was moving to pull the edge of the bed, but as he was moving, Nurse Chapel had put out her hand, and stopped him.

“I’ll call M’Benga,” she whispered, “Go get some rest, McCoy. No more surgery until he clears you.”

She was already pulling the biobed by herself, away from McCoy’s hands, and Spock watched McCoy’s face fall as the Captain was pulled away from his grasp.

“Chapel,” Doctor McCoy said, just as the Nurse was turning the bed into the hall. She turned to look over her shoulder, “Make sure he comes home too.”

Nurse Chapel nodded. “He certainly won’t die on our table, Doctor McCoy. Not when he knows he has his family waiting for him.” With that, she disappeared.

The silence had become all-consuming.

“He wasn’t planning on letting anyone take care of him until we were cleared, was he?” Sulu asked. The question needed no answer; everyone knew. Spock watched McCoy bite his lip before saying-

“Jim gives with his heart before he thinks with his head. He’d suffer through anything just so that a friend could be spared; if our roles were reversed, if he was the one in that prison-cell, he would’ve been happier, and I’m not saying that because I know him; I’m saying it because we _all_ know him,” he said.

Spock turned back to the space where the biobed had been wheeled out; he stared at the space Jim had left behind.

Humanity was a strange, illogical thing, and what made Jim human was not his innate ability to ‘rush into things,’ as he termed it, but in the methods through which he served to protect, to save and to love.

“It is in his loyalty, a love stronger than any man’s strength,” he said, and, deep down, he knew that what he said was truer than any proverb spoken. McCoy charged a look in his direction; the barely-perceptible nod confirmed everything that Spock had known about McCoy’s relationship with the Captain.

McCoy had heard Jim coming before he ever arrived, of course.

In that one moment, Spock’s reverence for his Captain, for their Captain, had blown out from that black hole into a new sense of space, a space that drew no walls, no parameters, no sense of time.

Spock mused about this space, and he wondered if this was the space that his friendship with Jim would take hold.

It was a space that Jim had created from the cracks against his skin, in the palms of outstretched, trusting hands.


End file.
